Free The Avenger 6 - The Blood Ring by Kenneth Robeson Page B

went over the threshold, and was under the tremendous stone lintel, supported by the gigantic red sandstone pillars brought from the Nile. He had the same odd, suffocating feeling that if he didn’t step very fast, the pillars would spread and allow the stone slabs to fall down on him.
    He stepped fast and scuttled between the four big pillars like a scared rabbit, fairly broadjumping onto floor with good old American ceiling above it. Then he started at a half-run toward the call box under the elbow of one of the statues.
    “Gee, the things are alive!” he panted, staring at the big stone images.
    He felt like a gnat in the presence of eagles. But next moment he had something else on his mind—something a lot more pressing than the statues. The mummy of the guy he’d been told was the son of some old priest named Taros! He had to pass that case, and he started to do it at a dog-trot. Then he stopped, as if jerked short with a rope tied around his waist.
    Words were coming from the mummy case.
    “My father’s charms must be returned without violence.”
    The watchman screamed aloud. Words again! Words, from a thing so long dead that it was hardly more than dust!
    “He must give all that he hath, to retrieve the charms. All that he hath to receive forgiveness for his blunder.”
    The guard ran in earnest, then, getting out of the Egyptian wing so fast that he looked like a streak.
    He went to the phone.
    “Mr. Benson? I must talk to Mr. Benson at once!”
    The drawling voice of a Negro answered his frantic summons of the Sixteenth Street mansion.
    “Mistuh Benson is out jus’ now. Any message?”
    “Tell him the mummy talked again,” said the watchman wildly. “Tell him—”
    He had never heard anything change so rapidly as the voice of the Negro. At one moment it had been sleepy, deep South. At the next it was crisp, and the words were uttered as a college professor might have spoken them.
    “I will get in touch with Mr. Benson the instant I can,” said Josh Newton. “Meanwhile, I would suggest that you return to that mummy case, and watch and listen. There may be more words.”
    The watchman backed away from the phone as if it had been a living thing.
    “Oh, no!” he said. “Not me! I wouldn’t go near that thing for—”
    There was a slight sting in Josh’s voice.
    “Words can’t hurt you. And you must, of course, have a gun. Stand near the case with your gun drawn. It is important that we know all the mummy may say.”
    The man hung up. He was shivering a little. But he remembered the cold, awful eyes of the man with the white hair and the dead face. This command, figuratively at least, was coming from The Avenger. The watchman decided that he was more afraid of those eyes, if he disobeyed the order, than he would be of the mummy case.

    He went back to the Egyptian wing.
    With his gun in his hand, he went to the case, to stand beside it. He’d listen and see if Taros’ long-dead son spoke again. Meanwhile, if any man or thing came close to him—
    He waggled the gun determinedly, and stood next to the case. And then the gun dropped from his nerveless hand.
    The case was there, but the mummy was not!
    Once more the mummy of Egypt’s priest, Taros’ son, was gone, and the glass lid opened to his gaze only black emptiness.
    There was the sound of a step from the blank end of the wing. Then more steps, in measured tread. The watchman whirled.
    He was far past screaming, now. He could only sway there, mouth slack, eyes crazed.
    The steps were as regular as the ticks of a clock. They were made by a thing that was swathed from head to foot with ancient linen bands of the type Egypt’s embalmers used.
    The mummy was walking steadily toward the watchman. As it moved, it slowly raised its swathed right arm, and an extended finger pointed at him.
    There were more steps.
    From behind a tremendous statue of Typhon, god of evil and of death, came three figures in flowing white. And after them came the